VA – Escort Remixed

It’s interesting that the RAC rework takes top bill on this mammoth remix package of 19-piece disco band Escort. Because it is the Greg Wilson mix that so obviously stands head and shoulders above the rest (totaling a cumbersome 12 remixes).

Escort’s original ‘Cocaine Blues’ is a sort-of cover of Dillinger’s 1976 ‘Cocaine In My Brain’ that additionally pilfers a bassline from People Choice’s ‘Do It Anyway You Wanna’ and some extra lyrics from Hamilton Bohannon’s ‘Disco Stomp’. (Confusing, I know). And Greg Wilson’s 2010 mix is a glorious exercise in Balearic disco: the rumbling, insistently funky bassline is accompanied by a rattle of chirpy percussion. And it is nice to see Ewan Pearson tail the package with his wobblier boogie version of the same track.

Other highlights come from disco don Leftside Wobble, serving a quirky, twanging disco rejigg of ‘Karawane’, and JKriv, offering his usual Brooklyn house face-lift to ‘Makeover’. And at a breakneck 138 BPM, Sub Swara’s mix is a frenetic tribal workout that’ll at least raise the pulse.

But elsewhere the indie vocals are so domineering, so ostentatious, that they do not lend themselves particularly well to ‘nu-disco’ remixes of this type, and probably stand better in their original settings.

That said, this package is notable in that it makes the fantastic Greg Wilson and Ewan Pearson versions (previously confined to the limited Cocaine Blues 12” from 2010) available in digital format.